Has Anyone Built Their Own Industrial Sewing Tables? --Can You Critique My Idea?

[mikesc]

Be careful that the top isn't the kind of thing that Trox was talking about further up ( particle board or fibre board with a laminate finish )..Office tables are only going to have to support a computer monitor or two an some other light stuff ( and not all in one place with a hole cut out of the table ) ..you might want to reinforce it if it is that type of board. your last image looks to have some sort of reinforcement running along the longest ( most potentially flexible ) direction ( maybe in case someone sat on it, or other things one gets up to at university with tables ) ..you'll be putting a lot of weight on the top, and some more hanging off the underside..and making a pretty big hole..right where the weight is going to be..

[xtown]

Thanks Mike. This was made to take the weight. Came from the Fabrication labs and easily supports 250lbs for prolonged use.

[thesergeant]

Goodluck! Let us know how it turns out.

Here's another shot of a table setup I made for an Adler 267 I setup for my mom. I routed out a cutout for her Singer 201 next to it. Both tables were made using birch plywood.

[suzelle]

Wow! Great ideas for building tables! These kinds of ideas swirl around in my head every day. Glad I am not the only crazy one!

[xtown]

I'm embarassed to put up some picks of my DIY table progect after seeing thesergeant's beautiful wood tops.

I'm happy with my outcome and the prices. The table and legs were $20 from the university surplus prop. The treadle, bobbin winder, thread tree and Servo motor totaled 195+ on Ebay. The link belt was $20 at HF. The 206RB-2 head was $275 but also included a Consew 226RB head and a table / motor setup I didn't like. I sold the Consew 226 and table for $400.

So the pictured Consew 206RB-2 was $160 after a trip to the shop for a cleaning and setup. Very happy man.

[Uwe]

LOVE that dark butcher block top and metal base you made! I'm contemplating using the ShopBot CNC router I have access to at my local TechShop to create the cutout in a new table top for my flatbed machine, a Consew 225. If it works out, I might make a few extra pretty table tops for the local Detroit market. It seems to me the cutout is fairly standardized for this class of machines. I'm also sure I'm not the first one to think of using a CNC router. The commercially available tops are clearly routed by CNC machines. Is anybody aware of available CAD files for CNC routing or do people re-invent the cutout wheel, so to speak, when they make their own table? I'd like to experiment making the CNC cutout with some cheap(er) plywood before I carve up my precious butcher block tops.

[SARK9]

Greg with Keystone Sewing has shared the manual for the Seiko STH-8BDL-3 in the past, and it has a fully dimensioned print for the table cutout included. I've not gotten around to writing the G-code for it, but someone probably has. You might ask if he would share the link for that manual again-

-DC

[thesergeant]

Oh man, I would love to have access to a CNC for my tops. It would make the process soooo much less labor intensive and the end result would be much more precise.

Not an industrial table but here's a preview of the "artisan table" from a Singer 1200-1 that I'm in the process of restoring. Repainted the legs white, applied waterslide decals to the legs and made a maple top. I still need to make the cutout for the machine but you get the idea.

[Uwe]

It turns out that Pfaff is one of the few manufacturers that include CAD drawing of the table top cutouts in their manuals, at least for the modern machines.

After some searching I had found dimensioned CAD drawings for the tabletop cutouts as part of Pfaff manuals, both for my Pfaff 335 and also Pfaff 1245. I took the screen shot of a section of the PDF drawing, imported it into Adobe Illustrator, scaled it to 1:1 life size and then printed it out on a 11x17 piece of paper to mark the cutouts for my testing work table. Worked out quite nicely. My Pfaff 335 test stand is quite ugly (with pretty details), but it's functional and the holes are in the right place. I'll post a picture once I figure out how to do that in this forum.

The Pfaff 1245 appears to be a standard flatbed design as far as tabletop cutout dimensions are concerned. The drawings use the euro style mount hinges. I'll probably use the 1245 drawing to create a CNC file for carving the cutout for my Consew 225 (and future upgrades). The PDF manual file for the Pfaff 1245 can be downloaded here:
http://www.pfaff-industrial.com/pfaff/downloads/technicaldoc/new/ba_1245_1246_05-12_e
just in case anybody else finds it useful. The dimensioned drawings for the tabletop cutouts are on page 19/20.

The tedious part will be to recreate the cutout design in CAD program to drive the CNC machine. I'll post the CAD file and CNC file if it all works out.

Edited January 9, 2015 by Uwe

[MuddyClearWaters]

This looks amazing.

Oh man, I would love to have access to a CNC for my tops. It would make the process soooo much less labor intensive and the end result would be much more precise.

Not an industrial table but here's a preview of the "artisan table" from a Singer 1200-1 that I'm in the process of restoring. Repainted the legs white, applied waterslide decals to the legs and made a maple top. I still need to make the cutout for the machine but you get the idea.